CNS Menu

Dynamic Menus

CNS Menu allows you to place hierarchal menus anywhere on a FileMaker layout. When a menu item is chosen, the script of your choice in the database of your choice is performed. Menus can have any number of sub menus and can be displayed with a variety of styles and bullet marks. Creating menus with CNS Menu is as easy as handing the plug-in a return delimited string of menu items to display. Your menu items can have a display name, and a value that can be used in your scripts, so the end user can see useful information such as a customer name while the value can be a Customer ID number.

CNS Menu ships with the “CNS Menu.fp7” example database which includes 15 examples demonstrating ways to use and understand the CNS Menu plug-in. The database is fully unlocked so you can explore every detail. We have also included the documentation for each example inline, so you can both examine the example and see its explanation all from one layout. Examples include, QuickMenu, Menu Placement, MenuBuilder, Value List to QuickMenu, Hidden Items, Menu Decoration, Mouse Grabber, Right Click, Data Entry, Layout Navigation, Update Menu Item, Bookmark Example, External XML Menu, and RSS Menu.

CNS Menu has many advantages over its predecessor, SCRIPTit. This rendition includes MenuBuilder in the configuration dialog which allows you to quickly build new menus without having to know XML. You can then simply use menus built in MenuBuilder in your database, or copy the XML which is generated for you. CNS Menu also includes a brand new way to create menus called “QuickMenus”. A QuickMenu takes a return separated list of items and creates a menu for you without having to know or use any XML.

Added the ability to specify absolute coordinates (the kind you get from GetLayoutObjectAttribute) instead of layout coordinates (the way CNS Menu, and its predecessor, SCRIPTit, has always worked). To specify absolute coordinates, append an exclamation mark (!) to the end of the coordinates.

1.1.11 (04/02/2012)

Fixed issues with persistent menus showing up as black text on black menus.

Improved mouse click handling on menus under FileMaker Pro 11.

Fixed issues with menu placement.

1.1.10 (07/06/2010)

New Background/Foreground colors / Bug Fixes

Imported core plug-in updates from other CNS Plug-ins.

Added the ability to define Background and/or Foreground colors to the menu items.

Fixed a bug under FileMaker Pro 11 on Mac where Right Mouse Clicks were not working.

Fixed issues under FileMaker Pro 11 on Mac with getting the location of the last mouse click, which, among other things, could cause a menu to show up at the current mouse location instead of where the mouse was clicked.

1.1.9 (03/23/2010)

FileMaker Pro 11 Compatibility / Other Bug Fixes

Fixed a bug on Windows where multiple successive separator lines were not collapsing into a single separator line.

Added a preference for disabling menu scaling with layout zoom.

Fixed menu positioning problems on Mac under FileMaker Pro 11.

Fixed menu selection problems on Mac under FileMaker Pro 11.

Imported core plug-in changes from other CNS Plug-ins.

1.1.7 (03/30/2009)

Corrected hover support / Misc other bugs

Fixed some issues on Mac dealing with getting the current mouse coordinates even when the mouse button hasn’t been pressed (basically corrects hover support).

Fixed a bug on Mac with GetMouseCoordinates where the “Top” coordinate was off if the FM10 Status Bar was visible.

Fixed a bug where the xml couldn’t enable a disabled menu item.

Fixed some slash encoding issues. (GetMenuChoice was double-encoding the slashes; GetMenuValue and Get(ScriptParameter) were encoding the slashes when they didn’t need to.)

Corrected an issue with the Register function where current, good registration would be cleared if a new registration attempt failed.

Added a “Clear” keyword to the Register function for clearing registration.

1.1.6 (02/03/2009)

Loading and Saving Persistent Menus Fix

Fixed some bugs dealing with Loading and Saving the Persistent Menus.

1.1.5 (02/02/2009)

FMP10 Compatibility / New Positioning Features / Bug Fixes

Fixed some issues with registration under runtime solutions on Windows.

Fixed an issue where the “Scrp-LastMenuChoice” old-style function wasn’t working.

Fixed a bug with the plug-in not correctly locating items on inserted menus.

CNSMenu_GetMenuChoice and CNSMenu_GetMenuValue now return values even if the selected menu item didn’t call a script. (This makes it easier to get this information when processing user input all in one script instead of having to parse the value returned from CNSMenu_ShowMenu.)

Fixed an issue with the MenuBuilder related to the inserted menu bug.

CNSMenu_VersionAutoUpdate function added.

Fixed a bug with Developer Passwords.

Merged in core plug-in updates from other CNS Plug-ins.

Fixed a bug where CNSMenu_GetMenuName wasn’t returning anything.

Fixed issues with correctly placing menus in FileMaker Pro 10 with its new “Status Bar” is visible.

Menu positions/Mouse coordinates are now adjusted correctly when the Text Ruler is visible (FMP8+).

Menu positions/Mouse coordinates are now adjusted correctly when the layout has been scrolled.